I remember seeing this movie with my brother at the old Ingram Mall 6 Theatre in San Antonio back in 1982 and yes we fell for the "man turned inside out" business. This was the only film in my life that I contemplated asking for my money back. Man, I miss the 1980s. Big haired girls, cheesy movies, bad special effects "What a world! What a world!"

SCREAMERS is a good film in my book. But to help Andrew on his confusion with the false advertisement on the video box, I better explain the whole story on why it's like that. SCREAMERS was made by the Italians in 1978 as L'ISOLA DEGLI UOMINI PESCI and was released breifly in the United States in an English dubbed uncut format as THE ISLAND OF THE FISH MEN. The American distributor United Pictures Organization bought the rights to THE ISLAMD OF THE FISH MEN and decided to release the film for full distribution in the United States. However, a new beginning sequence was shot featuring Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchell by director Miller Drake and also contained new effects scenes shot by Chris Walas. United Pictures Organization then went into co-production with Roger Corman's New World Pictures and Roger agreed to release the film. But their were some changes that had to be made. Corman had some extra music added in, cut down the 100 minute running time down, added a different English language dub, and changed the title to SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK so he can advertise it as a slasher film even though it does not belong in that genre. Well, the film bombed badly in 1980. So Corman has Jim Wynorski come up with a way to re-release the film. Wynorski retitles the film as SCREAMERS, shoots a trailer that shows a scene of a man being turned inside out while giving the tagline "Warning! In this film you will actually see a man turned inside-out!" When SCREAMERS was released it made some money, but when the theatre patrons did not see any person turning inside-out riots began at the theatres. So the film prints were taken back to New World Pictures and had the inside-out scene tacked on. But it does not appear on the video version because the inside-out sequence was not part of the original negative. Also, the video cover is a reproduction of the original poster and it says the film was directed by "Dan T. Miller". The name of "Dan T. Miller" was the alias name credit of Joe Dante and Dante was never involved with the film's American sequences at all! Only Miller Drake was responsible for the American footage of Ferrer and Mitchell, while Sergio Martino was responsible for the whole film. And actor Claudio Cassinelli is credited on the posters as "Charles Cass". So I hope this explains alot about you disappointment, Andrew.

Chris hit upon most of the things I was planning on writing about. I will say this though, for years I have read that the original Italian version was a "gentle children's fantasy film." I have only seen Screamers once (and didn't see all of it then), but to be honest I didn't find anything in the bulk of the film to be labled a gentle children's fantasy. It always struck me as a horror film, plain and simple. Regardless, it's legacy is the bogus ad campaign and the controversy it created.

God, I remember that ad. The thought of a guy turned inside-out freaked me out when I was 9 years old. They actually showed the inside-out guy in the ad and it freaked me out. I think it was on late-night during "Shock Theater"(MUHAHAHA). I guess ad campaigns can have a lot to do with the success of a picture, I have never seen this movie but I still remember that marketing from 21 years ago.

I saw this movie on "Creature Features" when I was but a young lad. "Creature Features" was the local, late-night movie show hosted by -- get this -- a 300-lb. hillbilly and his best friend, a skeleton. They both sat on bales of hay while they announced the film and provided commentary before and after commercial breaks. I believe the "Screamers" episode had a belly dancer as a guest host. Ah, those were the days. I really like "Screamers." The way the characters act is quite believable given the situations they encounter. That opening segment is my favorite part of the movie, it has that all-important "that would suck if it happened to me" quality and exudes a creepy ambiance. I always wondered if the opening segment was added in for American release and now I know. I'd like to get a look at the film in all its various incarnations. The fish men costumes, in my opinion, are quite good, if varied in quality.

SCREAMERS (aka. Island of the Fish Men)was directed by Sergio Martino in 1979 as a response to Lucio Fulci's gory Island horror ZOMBIE (of the same year), apparently Segio's brother (Luciano) or someone approached him with a script wanting an Island based horror film as a companion back up to ride on the coat-tails of Fulci's film. However this never was the case as SCREAMERS has been no where NEAR as sucsessful as ZOMBIE however I did find it entertaining, In fact it is sorta like ZOMBIE (They re-used lead British actor Richard Johnson (Dr. Meynard from ZOMBIE) in this film since he had just finished shooting ZOMBIE and SCREAMERS was being filmed in the same Carribean location, and they just replaced zombies with uber-cheesy looking "fish-men" (a rip-off since the tagline says you will see "inside-out men" possibly hinting at these "inside out men" as being the zombies

special note*- The added 15min opening sequence shot in the US (featuring meaningless performancess from genre fav's Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchell), was done only to beef up the gore level in the movie (since what was already there was pretty tame/low by Italian horror/exploitation standards, I thank Miller Drake for this because this 15 minute opening (featuring a couple nifty head rippings and Mel Ferrer getting his throat torn out)is easily the best part of the entire film (and of further note this opening sequence has no actual bearing on the actual movie itself, this stuff is never brought up or mentioned upon for the rest of the film,further more, a breif instance as a corpse coming to life in this sequence and trying to grab a lady (the ONLY zombie action in the whole film)- Just about the entire cast (except for Cameron Mitchell) and location of this film was re-used for Martino's follow up film to this one titled "THE GREAT ALLIGATOR"

Actually, I think Joe Dante DID have some kind of involvement with the U.S. cut. In the end credits, under "additional sequences," the credited "associate editors" are Giuseppe Dantini and Miller Drake. I'm in the process of adding the U.S. credits to IMDB, I've noticed that there is nobody named Giuseppe Dantini in the IMDB, and I can find absolutely no information about any person by that name having worked in either the American or Italian film industries. And if it were a member of the Italian crew, why would he be listed in the crew for the American "additional sequences"?

Then it hit me. "Giuseppe" is the Italian equivalent of "Joseph," while "Dantini" is a related diminutive of "Dante." In short, "Giuseppe Dantini" -> "Joseph Dante." I am almost 100% certain that this "Giuseppe Dantini" listed in the U.S. crew credits is, in fact, a pseudonym for Joe Dante.